Rape Fantasies by Margaret Atwood

Margaret Atwood is all the rage right now because of The Handmaid’s Tale, some new TV show and book we all had to read in high school. Women being oppressed by governments is well-trod territory, but this piece tackles it from a different direction – self-imposed subjection. ALSO, IT’S HILARIOUS.

“All the articles say it’s better not to resist,” one character says – but fuck that, fuck eroticizing a horrific violent thing and accepting it as something sexy and good. The real rape fantasy should be subverting it and finding humor and ridiculousness and control over it. If you fantasize about submitting in a world that demands your submission, you’ve chosen to find that power dynamic acceptable. (Shout out to all the men and women in kink relationships replicating the exact same power dynamics in the world around them and calling it “subversive” and “playful” when really it’s just lacking imagination.)

I particularly appreciate how flippant/realistic this piece is about rape – as in, it’s a thing that happens literally all the time to pretty much everyone, and might even be “one of the most significant moment’s in a girl’s life – almost like getting married or having a baby or something”. (Get it? Get the joke? Because marriage and having babies are equally horrific things women are subjected to and fantasize about??? SAVAGE.) It’s scary and awful but that doesn’t mean it has to mean anything when it happens to you. And I mean that.

“Dwelling on [unpleasant things] doesn’t make them go away. But not dwelling on them doesn’t really make them go away, either.” So laugh and fantasize.